Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

He has said he is amenable to white nationalist writings. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-a... He has expounded at length on the suitability of certain races for slavery.

He has frequently called for the dissolution of the form of government that has spent decades and an incredible body count to outlaw slavery.

Mysteriously this doesn't quite add up to a wholesale endorsement of enacting slavery in the US. Just in whatever part of the world he'd like to help Thiel and the ultra-conservative libertarian people build.

And quite frankly, plain naked racism is almost always the justification for enacting slavery. Just because it's convenient for him to say he doesn't endorce active conversion to his "natural" relationship today doesn't mean that the notions aren't a direct precursor and a justification for said actions.

Admit the worldview is wrong and he was mistaken, then hold that view publicly and without recantation for a reasonable sum of time. But that's for me. Other people may have different standards.

Forgiveness is not something that calendars well.

> He said he wouldn't. Until he does, I'll believe him. Maybe I'm a pushover for thinking so, but I also think people are innocent until proven guilty. He says some shitty things, but I don't think he'll say them on stage. And if he does, then he gets kicked out.

Ignoring his existing behavior and its duration is not a logical or reasonable act. It is a luxury you can express because his beliefs do not deny your essential humanity.

> And because of that, I'm going to believe Moldbug. I hate that I have to, but I think I can logically defend it, with a lack of further evidence. (I have to because I can. If I can't, I won't.)

You do not have to. You've chosen to ignore his writing. You've chosen to ignore his reported and verifiable actions. You've chosen to ignore the people hurt by those actions.

> If someone says something stupid, by God, let them shout their idiocy, so that we may hear it and strike it down with our logic and our facts.

How often do black people have to refute people who claim they're sub human before you're satisfied? You should let them know what they're on the hook for, if that's evidently the rule.

> that he and what he represents is actually harmful.

None of this is about neoreaction. No one has mentioned neoreactionaries. That he believes in an authoritarian government or all but fetishizes small corporate structure is supremely boring and unoriginal, he's repeating the same arguments about essential quality that we saw in the Victorian Era.

His "biodiversity" doctrine is the problem. And that's not a belief shared by all neoreactionaries (and I know a few who vehemently deny that this is a required tenant).

Racism is not politics, racism is not religion. Racism is hate. You keep trying to sneak in this equivocation like I won't notice. Like somehow if you say it often enough we'll all forget this is the central point of this entire discussion. It is the same moral and ethical cowardice that filled the original blog post.

> Even if you consider my views misguided or wrong, do they at least follow logically?

No. You have willfully discarded the evidence, discarded Occam's razor for a strained equivocation that wouldn't hold up in a first year college philosophy class.

You have further attempted to take a weak form of censure (i.e., "We decline to have you speak at this conference, though you may still attend.") and classify this into a rejection of that person's humanity and then pretended this is identical to Yarvin's views towards black people. At worst, that's disingenuous. At best, it lacks even a shred of human empathy.

I'm certainly done talking to you now.

I've read one or two of his walls of text, but kind of fogged out a bit due to the length so was more skimming than reading closely in many parts.

Generally, when I ask someone for a citation it is because I want to know if they have done their homework, or are just repeating what they read on some blog or forum.

If you say he is racist, I have no doubt you have checked for yourself, and if I did ask you for cites you'd give ones that strongly backed your points.

The person I was responding too...not so much. I was not impressed with his response.

From what you said here and elsewhere, it sounds like there are three levels to understanding Yarvin. At the first level, you see some statements about things like slavery that seem in isolation to be pretty bad.

At the second level, when you check for context of those specific statements, they seem reasonable. E.g., slavery as a natural human relationship. Given how long widespread slavery lasted in human history, it is hard to say that it is not natural. The key at level two is to realize that recognizing something as natural does not imply one thinks it is good. I'd say much of human advancement comes from deciding that we will NOT do things that are natural, because often natural behavior maximizes short term or local gain over long term or widespread gain. Hence, we have banned for good reason various natural behaviors such as slavery, rape, revenge killings, genocide against conquered people, and so on.

Then there is the third level, apparently, where you go deeper and decide that he really is racist underneath.

I've went to level two. You are at level three. The person I was responding to appears to be either at level one, or perhaps at level two but applying faulty logic (e.g., it was democratic governments that outlawed slavery, and Yarvin is against democracy, therefore Yarvin is in favor of slavery).

You're confusing yourself. Let me use reductio ad absurdum to point out how your logic is self-defeating. Please understand, I'm not ridiculing you, just pointing out the logical fallacy. Try this formulation...

Isn't hating "hate", in itself, hateful? Why, then, it follows that we should love "hate" in order to be loving! Hate people: it's what loving people would do!

There is a moral equivalence here that's wrong. Despising things that are evil isn't in itself evil, merely because you're employing a word or sentiment normally associated with evil. It's the loaded meaning of the words "despise" and "intolerant" that's tripping you up. Try the word "embrace" instead and things become much clearer.

Example: Isn't failing to embrace intolerance intolerant? No, it's the very opposite.